Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully integrated, highly available system for running applications. The vendor says that, using patented HyperCore™ technology, the SC//HyperCore self-healing platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and…
$3,300
per node
VMware ESXi
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.
N/A
Pricing
Scale Computing Platform
VMware ESXi
Editions & Modules
HE151
$3,300
per node
HE501
$6,800
per node
HC1300
$11,900
per node
HC3350F
$13,400
per node
HC5450D
$26,500
per node
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Scale Computing Platform
VMware ESXi
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
Pricing shown in U.S. Dollar.
Pricing for other regions available on request.
KVM: Scale HC3 Hypervisors builds on KVM, but extends it massively with their hassle-free setup, integration and support. Proxmox: Also builds on KVM, but needs much more manpower to keep it running. VMware ESXi: I'm a long-time ESXi expert and had to deal with all the hassles …
Scale was overall the better option for us due to the ability to get a very powerful system for a cheaper price than what it would have been to achieve the same with VMWare. Although, this has changed now that Scale has seemingly gone to a subscription model for it's software …
I can't speak to large organizations however Scale seems like the perfect fit for small to medium size organizations. We could not justify the cost of VMWare with our needs, and the uncertain future of Hyper-V led us to pick Scale.
At the end of the day, and in the environment we are in, Scale just fits the bill, both price-wise and functionality-wise. Upgrading our VM environment was always a week-long process, now, it is a twenty-minute process, implementing, converting VMs, and rolling everything over …
Scale Computing is much more simple to manage and set up, and use right out of the box than the competitors. One can be up and running out of the box within an hour.
Each system I evaluated has its own strengths and weaknesses. I ended up choosing Scale because of the features and the price. I feel Scale has the best value for the money. I also like to support smaller businesses and I feel that you often get better customer support, which …
Scale replaced a VMWare solution. We compared Scale against a new VMWare solution as well as against a Nutanix hyper-converged solution. After looking at the costs, features, support, and hardware, Scale was the easy choice for our business. It fit every need we had and after 6 …
Price was a huge factor. Of the products we looked at the Scale HC3 package was considerably cheaper, but had processing, storage and virtualization we needed. I spoke to other companies in our line of business that own the Scale servers and all were so happy they moved over to …
We had looked at hyperconverged systems from Nutanix, HPE (Simplivity) and NetApp - all wanted a very high premium on top of which there were still additional licenses.
Their individual high costs meant they were never viable despite some attractive feature sets.
When it was time to refresh our old previous virtual environment, we looked at traditional server/storage, server/san, as well as other HCI competitors. We evaluated many solutions, but decided on Scale Computing for its simplicity to manage, use and setup, cost, but most of …
The price to performance for Scale Computing HC3 is something that made the final decision for our organization easy. While Scale may lack some of the advanced features of VMware, as a shop that had used VMware for over 7 years, I can confidently say that in my time with the …
For an organization our size, Scale is the complete package at a lower cost. While it doesn't have anywhere near the amount of configurability of VMWare, the features we really needed are included. Staff required almost no training (compared to VMWare), and setup of the cluster …
Scale Cluster Computing HC3 has much better GUI for non-professional users to manage and operate. Replication is fairly simple to implement and configure. The allocation of physical storage is much better than alternatives. The most important thing is that scale software …
The vendors that I mentioned offer solutions very close to Scale Computing however, we found out that their solutions had many pieces and a lot of overhead. The overall ability to consolidate different pieces such as Backup-replication, Storage, Virtualization Software, …
I think VMware ESXi is a better solution than Hyper-V was at the time. Mainly because you don't need to run a Windows OS to run ESXi. I also think the integrations available with [VMware] ESXi are superior[.]
I would recommend it to anyone who has three or more servers. We just received another quote as I am about to deploy Scale at City Hall as well. This will replace my 8-year-old VMware cluster that hosts 20 servers.
If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
Snapshots are lean and fast, so restore time is simply amazing. When you don't have time to wait after a crypto attack to restore, I have found nothing faster!
Clients can never fully know their growth for years to come, and sometimes it is only a year after the original install. This is no problem we can build on to the system like Lego blocks. Just simply adding a node or two and there is no downtime!
There are many functions that can be done while servers are running that help to maintain the most uptime, as an example disk size on the primary disk can be expanded without shutting down the server.
Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
It exposes no backup API. You have to treat VMs as physical machines, with all the drawbacks. This is a huge problem, since the official partner Acronis can't deliver. If you ever worked with Veeam you want it back very very badly.
Assigned RAM is used RAM. The hypervisor can't share memory or only allocate what is used etc. It's wasted RAM most of the time.
No logging and auditing. (There is, but not visible to the customer).
The GUI is quite bad. It looks like done by a designer instead of an IT expert. But it's improving constantly.
The company relies heavily on KVM, but seems to have no developer in the open source community. This leads to answers like "we can't do anything about QEMU drivers". Yes, you can. Have delevopers working on it.
You can't do basic things like list all of your VMs and see how much RAM/disk, etc. they are using (e.g. in a list view).
No rules on which VMs start on which nodes, which VMs to prioritize, etc.
VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
Since I have had no issues with downtime; easier management of my cluster and the ability to lower the number of devices in my Infrastructure, I will gladly renew my support contract with Scale Computing HC3 and upgrade my equipment with them when it comes time for it.
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
Everything you need to do is point-and-click easy. If you are the kind of admin who wants to edit every config file and endlessly customize your environment, then Scale may not be for you. On the other hand, if you just want it to work really well, and do what they told you it will do, then Scale is the ideal system.
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
The support team deserves major props for how cordial and professional they were with our implementation. We were assigned a project manager and engineer. Everything was scheduled with our kick-off call, and our engineer got us up and running in no time.
I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
The implementation was very easy. We had Scale support on standby and they were ready and eager to help if needed. The process went so fast the employees in the organization did not even know it was done.
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
At the end of the day, and in the environment we are in, Scale just fits the bill, both price-wise and functionality-wise. Upgrading our VM environment was always a week-long process, now, it is a twenty-minute process, implementing, converting VMs, and rolling everything over to Scale was completed in less than a week's time, and that included training.
As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
HC3 is one of the best products I have purchased for our district. It is unbelievably reliable to the point that they shoot themselves in the foot on support contracts.
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.